Reading 07: Big Data is scary, but it also made sure the cutest formal dress popped up on my Facebook feed so it’s pretty ok

I do think that it is important to make people aware of the potential vulnerabilities of big data, but the reality of the world is that privacy is declining. Each generation is more comfortable with the idea of their life details being discoverable. At 21 years old, I am pretty comfortable with companies knowing things like my search history and the things I store on my phone and cloud accounts. Of course for me a big part of that is that I don’t feel like anyone (or at least certainly no one who knows me as an individual) is evaluating these things. After all, what do I care if that embarrassing or strange thing that I Googled gets thrown into an algorithm that ultimately most likely decides to do nothing with it (or at the very least shows me a strange ad like once.) I truly think that most often the result of these big data “harvests” brings me an overall better user experience.

I like that while perusing Facebook, I might see Target ads showing me dresses or home goods similar to things I have been searching for in the past. There have been many times that I’ve clicked on the link to do some online shopping and if it’s a product that I’m truly interested in, it’s usually more exciting than Facebook anyway. Honestly, the extent to which they know my shopping tastes is as freaky as it is cool. I get on Facebook purely for entertainment value. I understand that companies like Facebook and other major tech companies usually provide their services for free and rely heavily on ads for revenue. I think that it is in the spirit of their business to provide me with ads that entertain me related to products that I am interested in. After all if Facebook were riddled with ads that I zero percent cared about, I would probably be more likely to close the app, deciding that the annoyance of ads was outweighing the entertainment.

Big data is powerful — and honestly I think that in the grand scheme of things the benefits of big data will far outweighs the shortcomings. I understand the problems that come up with privacy and I understand that there are pieces of information where security is crucial. However, in terms of ads and the buying/selling of consumer information, I really think that the “weirdness” of it is minuscule compared to the benefit we receive as consumers.